1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology which can improve the facilities for customers when a plurality of commodities are purchased on an on-line system and which can contribute to a reduction in purchase price.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with the development of the internet, on-line shopping services in which commodities are purchased through the internet have become popular. For this reason, in a company which develops on-line shopping, more development is desired in the facilities of on-line shopping, which will become even more widespread in the future.
In a conventional on-line shopping system, a customer accesses an on-line shopping server through the internet to order a desired commodity from a commodity list. When a shop receives this order, the shop assigns delivery of the commodity to a forwarding agent. In this manner, the commodity is delivered to the customer by the forwarding agent several days later. In addition, the purchase price of the commodity is paid on the basis of settlement information input when the order is made.
In the conventional on-line shopping system, when a commodity is single purchased, a consumer compares the selling prices of the commodity in a plurality of on-line shops, and often purchases the commodity having the lowest price. Therefore, from the viewpoint of the purchase of a single commodity, since consumers can easily compare selling prices with each other in the on-line shopping system, it can be said that the on-line shopping system is a method which has high facilities for consumers, and which can allow the purchase of commodities at low prices.
However, since an on-line shop is always compared with other shops with respect to selling prices, the shop may so excessively promote sales in the shop that the shop takes a risk of limitless low-price competition.
In addition, a customer can easily compare the prices of a single commodity. However, in a conventional on-line shopping system, when a consumer purchases a plurality of commodities such as necessities at once, facilities may be poor, and the costs may be high. More specifically, when a plurality of commodities are purchased at once, operations for summing the prices of the plurality of commodities must be respectively performed in shops. Therefore, the operations are very cumbersome for the shops.
For this reason, many consumers always purchase pluralities of commodities in one on-line shop without comparing totals of the prices in multiple shops with each other. Therefore, consumers may let the chance to purchase a commodity at a low cost slip.
In the conventional on-line shopping system, since the shop side has the right to select forwarding agents in the transportation of commodities, shops often assign transportation to the same respective forwarding agents, because of transaction conditions inherent to the shops. However, in recent years, each forwarding agent normally reviews their transportation fee system and service contents to obtain customers. For this reason, there is a risk that a customer may miss a good opportunity to select a forwarding agent which can give a low transportation fee to the customer.